Book Bingo Saturday with Theresa Smith and Amanda Barrett has rolled around again, and week three has provided me with my first opportunity to tick off two squares, as per our arrangement to make sure we fill out all thirty across the year. Both of these books are new releases from January this year. Of course, no reading challenge would be complete without a book by Sulari Gentill, and her new book, All the Tears in China, fits this square. My second square is the Non-Fiction About a Non-Famous Person, filled with a book about someone i had never known about before.
In his ninth outing, artist Rowland Sinclair his friends, fellow artist, Clyde Watson Jones, sculptress Edna Higgins, and poet, Jew and Communist, Milton Isaacs have headed to China to help Rowland’s brother, Wilfred, with a business deal involving the family business. However, as it is Rowly, not everything will or can go smoothly. From beatings to a murdered Russian in his suite, arrests and people from all sides looking to harm Rowly or wrongly accuse him of nefarious crimes. As the series moves further towards the outbreak of World War Two, the threats of fascism, nationalism, jingoism and violence against any perceived as being the wrong sort are growing. Hitler’s shadow keeps rising as the books go on as well – and politics are becoming ever more cemented in narcissistic and devious, evil themes and extremes, mirroring our world today. Reading the series, Rowly and his friends are caught between sides, and being pulled in different directions with demands for support. Set in 1935, the world is teetering between two wars: The War to End all Wars and the war that nobody thought they would have to face. It has been eighteen years since the Russian Revolution, and rumours abound about the survival of the youngest daughter. In this world, and story, who is telling the truth, and who is trying to hurt Rowly and his reputation?
The second book this week is Australia’s Sweetheart by Michael Adams, the story of Mary Maguire, a young woman who moved from Australia to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, and the ups and downs of the world of Hollywood, and the expectations and pressures she was under during this time to fit in and fulfil the desires of people she didn’t even know. Her life was much more than this though, and Michael begins from her early days as a child growing up in her parent’s hotel, to dance classes, small films in Australia and the eventual Hollywood siren call. From here, to England, and marriage sickness and motherhood – a fraught time where her husband was arrested for being a Nazi sympathiser, and she was watched by MI5. Finally, her life took her into a new marriage, and away from the darkness of the war years. The full story is fascinating, and too full to recount it all here. I chose this for this square because Mary is a forgotten star and figure in Australia – she’s not as well-known as others from history – so I think this was a perfect fit for this square.
Look out next week for my next square!
Title: All the Tears in China
2017 was the first year I took part in the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge, and it was the sixth year it has been running. Keen to read more Australian Women Writers and raise the profile of our wonderfully talented female authors, I signed up in early January 2017, as a way to keep myself occupied whilst building my blog, and to read more local literature. To start, I initially made a list of books I wanted to read, including The Beast’s Garden (a re-read that I never got to), anything new from Lynette Noni and Sulari Gentill, a couple of books I had obtained over Christmas, and A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French. This list was my base, and from there, within the first month, I had completed my goal with the entirety of The Matilda Saga by Jackie French, and several review books that weren’t quite my style, but that I passed on to those who did enjoy them. From there, many of the books I read were review books from publishers, all genres, growing my list substantially, so I had more than doubled my initial goal by April of the year – perhaps even tripled it by then. So I kept reading, devouring fantasy, historical fiction and crime as my favourite genres for the year.
Title: A Dangerous Language
how the dangerous language that Rowland and his friends opposed in 1934 from Fascists and the conservatives of the time is repeating itself today. The feelings of powerlessness that the ordinary people had against those in politics and with influence that can encourage this dangerous language Rowland dislikes are felt through Milt and Clyde throughout the novel, and in particular Clyde during a boat cruise from Fremantle to Melbourne, where they must ensure Egon gets to Melbourne safely, and in Traveller’s Class, Rowland is able to get Egon as far as possible on his trip. The social class contrast between Rowland and his friends appears even more so in this book, where class and politics have become crucial to the evolution of the plot and characters at the stage of the series. The history of this turbulent period is woven into the plot and is sometimes the motive behind the crime, such as in A Dangerous Language. I also enjoy the inclusion of historical figures and people throughout that had an impact on history – this gives the stories an authenticity to them that is both exciting and informative at the same time.
the invisible stories that history may have forgotten, such as Jackie French’s Matilda Saga, which begins in 1894 in book one, and by book seven, is in the 1970s. It deals with the silenced voices I mentioned before – the women and children left out of the record, or simply associated with a husband’s name, or the fictional daughter of the swaggie of Waltzing Matilda, whose imagined existence and therefore imagined erasure from the song by Banjo Paterson brings Matilda O’Halloran of the Matilda Saga to life.
Over the course of seventy years, the Matilda Saga tells the story of women’s rights, of wars – The Boer War, World War One, World War Two and Vietnam by book five The Ghost by the Billabong, which I am currently reading, those left behind on the home front, and the 
innocents whose lives are turned upside down. It tells of the inter-war period between World War One and The Great Depression, and how orphaned teenagers like Flinty McAlpine raised families, after injuring her back, and how Blue escaped a prison-like home to find her family, and how Nancy went to Malaya to get her sister-in-law home, and found herself trapped in a prisoner of war camp by the Japanese on a small island off Malaya. The most recent books focus on Jed Kelly, and as I’ve just started book five, I’m still getting to know her and her story, but she comes to Drinkwater – Matilda’s property – and the characters that link all the books together – to find out who her great-grandfather is. Jackie French weaves history and imagination together to create this world and those who worked behind the scenes and brings the forgotten stories to light – the women, the orphans, the Indigenous Australians whose voices are clear in these books. Each book can be read alone, however, reading them in order has helped me see all the connections and links.
Another Australian author I enjoy is Kate Forsyth. Her historical fiction stories also place the female character in the centre. My favourite is The Beast’s Garden, set in World War Two Germany, where Ava works to subvert Nazi power, whilst married to a Nazi, one whom she loves but at the same time fears, unsure of what he will do should he find out about her Jewish friends and their resistance, or her work against the Nazis. The power of a subversive voice not often heard in literature is what gave The Beast’s Garden it’s heart and power: we saw the impact of the Nazi regime through Ava’s eyes. What it did to her family, her friends, and what having a Spanish mother did to her, how it affected her as she lived with typically Aryan sisters. Even though this doesn’t tell the story of an Australian character, it is definitely one of my favourites.
r family is hiding. The book delves int
o various prejudices in the community at the time of war, and how they felt towards each other. As I read this, I had the question in the back of my mind: Did societal expectations drive the behaviour of some? The book dealt with the history nicely, and again, used voices not often heard in the history books to tell those experiences – perhaps something the history books need more of to have a rounded understanding of the war as a whole, even on the home front. Using silenced voices like Heiss, Forsyth and French have done makes the story more powerful, gives it more impact.
throughout the series. Poor Rowly has been shot, stabbed, beaten, and in a car accident, and has come through it all. He is an Australian gentleman. It is another fabulous series by a great Australian author.
Title: Give The Devil His Due (Rowland Sinclair #7)